


wherever you are

by tnevmucric



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, Slice of Life, unbetad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:40:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27947699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tnevmucric/pseuds/tnevmucric
Summary: we begin with the unspectacular raincoat that lets rain sink into your clothes and the meddlesome gumboots that decide to doom your feet with their ineffective gaps and tight ankle-bites. and we begin with goro akechi a few feet away holding a newspaper above his head that is very much on its way to becoming a lump of wet ink in his hands.“hey”, he calls. “you’re going to be fine.”
Relationships: Akechi Goro & Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro & Persona 5 Protagonist, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 16
Kudos: 38





	wherever you are

_I’m Outta Love_ is playing through the gas station speakers on one of the cooler days of May. While Akira holds the pump against his car he’s eyeing the price with some chagrin, but his fingers are tapping along to the tune. The breeze is mild and pleasant for this time of day, and though he feels particularly lazy, he thinks he might stop off at the grocer and get a loaf of sourdough. Maybe heat it up tonight with some butter and Parmesan in the pan. Tomatoes. Goro could handle the drinks like he always does; he thinks he knows everything after that wine tasting they did when they were in Italy for Ann’s 31st. Then again, Akira’s pretty confident on Italian cuisine after he paid for that private class—he drools at the thought of savoury mushroom gnocchi.

So he’s thinking—he’s thinking maybe a bath afterwards. Together. Or before, and he can leave Goro in the bath while he cooks and then they’ll just eat in their robes while watching an old episode of Gilmore Girls because Goro hasn’t even finished season 2 and it’s beginning to get on Akira’s nerves. Plus, they have bath salts they haven’t used that have been sitting around since their last anniversary.

He puts the pump back into place and leans both arms against the roof, staring out at the highway, and beyond that the distant city, and between that the dead land. He digs his toe into the cement.

He decides to pick up a bottle of wine, too. Goro will probably be tired from work so it’s better to keep things simple. A bath after dinner—they can fall asleep full and refreshed, a good beginning to the coming weekend. They can lie in on Saturday, go for a hike on Sunday… it’s a good plan. Next weekend, Goro can choreograph whatever he likes.

* * *

The last thing he says to Goro is this: “I’m leaving early tomorrow, so we’ll have to rain-check on that.”

* * *

Goro chose the house because of the natural lightning and Akira said yes because of the kitchen floors. Goro said no because of the kitchen floors. A tentative truce was born.

Six years ago he is staring at the 2x2 periwinkle blue tiles begrudgingly as Akira hangs a photo above the bubble-wrapped bureau.

“It looks like a kiddy pool”, Goro says finally. “If it was the backsplash I might be able to handle it, but the _floor?_ ”

“Yeah, well I could say a thing or two about the curtains you chose.”

“Curtains are easily replaceable.” He then pauses, coffee mug halfway to his frowning mouth. “What’s wrong with the curtains?”

They’ve barely finished unpacking, barely even made a dent. Around midday everyone’s set to come over and the only things that aren’t wrapped in plastic are the coffee machine and mugs. Akira gets down from the stepladder and looks up at the photo, pleased as punch. Goro takes a very deliberate, very _loud_ sip.

“It’s crooked.”

* * *

Akira’s got the vague memory of when he first scraped his knee bad enough for it to scab. He must have been in pre-primary walking home with his mom, who was, at this point in his life, just ‘mama’. Mama who made the best crepes and who dressed up as Cleopatra for one of her night courses on women in history— _his_ mama, who, when he fell, laughed and called him her little strawberry, her _sweetiepiesugarplumappleofmyeye._ And like it was nothing more than a tizzy, she helped him up and they kept walking. Tomorrow he’d pick at the scabs and the tomorrow after that the scabs would come back and so he’d pick at them again.

He stares at Goro’s cracked phone. At his jacket, which at the time of impact had been folded over his arm.

No mama to pick him up now. No one to hold his hand. No scabs to pic at.

* * *

“Did you change the light bulb in the guest room?”

“I changed the light bulb in the guest room.”

“What about the one in the bathroom?”

Akira dropped his arms from where they had been holding up paint samples and stares deadpan at Goro. Goro, bless his heart, feigns an indifferent air.

“Hold them up again?” he asks, waving his phone. “I’ll take a photo and send it to Ann.”

“Why does Ann get a say in the paint colour but I don’t?” Akira dutifully brings the swatches back up and squints at them. “They’re both white anyway. Like, I think there’s barely a shades difference between them.”

“Ann’s with Ryuji right now”, Goro explained, taking the photo and sending it off. “They’ve both seen an unorthodox amount of renovation programs and I need my own expertise to be validated.”

“Expertise”, Akira repeats. Goro narrows his eyes and just as he’s about to respond his phone starts to ring in his hand. He answers it, leaving Akira to return to the dining room where a table has been successfully put together.

“Oh no”, he hears Goro say. “If you think I’m painting my hallway off-white then you have completely underestimated and disrespected the 9 years I spent watching home improvement television.”

Akira wonders if they’d be able to take his scathing tone seriously if they knew he was walking around in pink fleece shorts.

* * *

Goro is in Kichijōji. Goro is in Osaka. Goro is in Italy. Goro is on the fucking moon. Goro isn’t home right now, leave a message, get back to you soon.

Akira stares at their bed from the doorway.

He sleeps in the lounge instead.

* * *

The first time Goro sleeps over in Akira’s shitty apartment, Akira believes he has truly fallen in love.

It’s 4:15 AM because they both have lectures at 7 and Goro is watching Akira make scones like his life depends on it—which eventfully coincides with the brutalities of Akira’s culinary passion.

“You’re just a pussy”, Akira claims. “Scones are soft inside, I’ll even cut it in half for you.”

“That’s not the point”, Goro insists. “Like, I’ve been using Sensodyne for 3 years and my teeth are still sensitive. I put ice in my tea. I wait until my ice cream’s melted. I don’t think I can handle the crust of a scone.”

“How can you even afford Sensodyne with your intensely sexy uni budget?”

“Instant espresso and taking advantage of the samples you bring back from class.”

Akira pauses, scone cutter mid-cut.

“I’m a useful boyfriend”, he decides. Goro reaches out to pat his cheek.

“Sure you are.”

* * *

He thinks about doing the laundry.

* * *

The two of them, side by side, no bed frame but a mattress is just fine. Their ceiling. Their bedroom window. Their house. Their home.

Akira rolls his head to the side and finds Goro staring at him. He smiles, but Goro does not return it.

“What?” Akira asks.

And it can be funny how the last thing you ever say in your life can be said so many times before.

“I can’t wait to wake up to you”, Goro says.

* * *

A gloom has grown in all of the cold parts of Akira’s house. Because that’s what it is now—Akira’s house. One toothbrush, one cup in the sink. He stares at the tap for the sprinklers and spite manifests into ignorance—the plants will not get watered because it’s Goro’s day to do it. No sugar in his coffee because Goro was meant to refill the jar.

The front door rattles and for an awful, tremendous, hopeful moment he looks up from where he’s sat on the kitchen floor and watches it open.

It’s only his friends.

They all pile into the master bed, a mass of sweating and painful warmth to soak the sheets and crinkle them beyond repair. Akira lies on Goro’s side with Makoto spooned tightly behind him and Ann behind her. The back of Futaba’s head rests on Akira’s inner knee and her legs splay horizontally out to Yusuke who presses his cheek against Ann’s thigh and holds onto Makoto’s ankle. Haru makes space for herself in the middle of it all on her back and Ryuji lies upright towards the edge of the bed, an arm outstretched far enough around Ann and Makoto that he could just touch Akira’s head and keep his feet on Yusuke’s side. All still in their funeral clothes. All still in their shoes. Just listening to nothing but each other’s breathing.

They all begin to cry.

* * *

“I thought I understood grief.” Saying it out loud makes Akira cringe. He fiddles with the caramel wrapper between his fingers; it’s already left a sugar coating in his mouth but it doesn’t make his words any sweeter.

“You do your groceries yet?”

Akira shakes his head. “No, not yet.” Sojiro reaches out to stop his hands.

“Do that first”, he says. “The rest you can figure out later.”

“What’s ‘the rest’?” Akira asks. “I mean—I’m barely coming to terms with the fact that he’s not coming home. And there’s this version of him in my head, with his face, telling me thinks I think he’d say but what he really wouldn’t say at all.” He adds, a little distressed: “I think I’ve forgotten what Goro’s even like.”

Sojiro thought for a long moment, tapping his finger against the countertop. “He hated lime flavoured things.”

“… He did”, Akira agreed. “And cantaloupe.”

“He thought it tasted like dirt. Dumbass.”

“Always tied his shoes a dozen times on each side because he was anxious about tying his shoes in public.”

They both looked away. Sojiro didn’t mention that Akira hadn’t done the dishes, or that he was wearing the most ugly piece of argyle he’d ever seen in his life. He didn’t even think of it. He says: “Maybe you should listen to that Goro in your head. Might have some good advice.”

And then he says: “I have one too.”

“What’s he say?” Akira asks.

“To take care of you,” Sojiro replies. “To take care of all you kids. You know, he used to bed Futaba every morning back when she was still in school that she wouldn’t go outside. He’d buy her some new game or part she’d been looking at if she proved him wrong.” Sojiro met his eye. “What do I needa buy you?”

Akira says nothing, continuing to fiddle with the wrapper. Sojiro sighs and moves around him to get started on the dishes.

* * *

Akira retreats. Back, back, back to a day when they were 20, when everything was stupid and naïve and love felt like a colossal and terrifying thing. To the space in his mind where Goro still exists. It’s Leblanc on a day where the lighting seemed very particular and the weather was at its warmest. Akira can remember brimming laughter in his chest. He can see Goro wiping his hands on his apron and flicking soapsuds away.

“You can’t stay here forever”, Goro reminds. His hair is at its shortest, and he won’t start growing it out for another month or two. It’s a Friday which means it’s his shift at Leblanc, which means Akira will waste his day off at his place of work just to watch Goro make lattes and play host. Goro is still trying to find his footing out of rehab. Akira is still trying to figure out that he’s in love.

“I know”, Akira replies and folds his arms on the counter, resting his cheek there. “Five more minutes. Did tube sock guy come in today?”

Goro laughs, _yes_ , and Akira can remember thinking with a certain kind of awe that he wasn’t sure if he’d ever get to hear Goro laugh like that again.

And that feeling comes back tenfold.

* * *

Ann spoke from behind her wine glass, boysenberry ice cream staining the left side of her shirt while ash gathered on Akira’s instead of the glass tray in his lap. Spoons were abandoned in a tub on the coffee table and Ann stared up at the ceiling, vaguely swirling her wine.

“You mind if I go through his stuff later?” she glances over. “Just to find the things I gave him.” Akira waves a hand—he doesn’t care. He takes a drag of his cigarette.

“Go ahead. It might help me get around to packing it all up anyway.”

She frowned. “You know you don’t have to pack him up ‘cos he’s gone. He’s still… he’s still here, you know? He doesn’t just stop existing. Past”, she adds empathically. “Present, future.”

Akira snorts but it seems unkind. “You’re drunk.”

“So are you.” She tips her glass to clink his and he reciprocates but sets his drink down instead of sipping. “I mean what I say, though. Like, I am most commonly a fucking wealth of wisdom.” She stood suddenly, putting her wine beside his. “Here’s more wisdom—fuck this.” And she starts towards the speaker.

“Ann”, Akira starts but she ignores him, flicking through his phone.

“What did Goro do every morning?” she asked out loud and set the phone back down. As she straightened up, a song began to play and she started to wiggle her hips. “In the shower”, she said. “On the train, in the car. Once a day.”

“He listened to this song.”

“He listened to this song”, Ann repeated and spun in a circle, right over to Akira and grabbing his hands even as he protested. “Because it was his _favourite_ song and it made him _happy_.”

Akira let go, dropping his cigarette in his wine glass and letting Ann drag him up, swinging their arms in some strange version of couples exercise. The song plays and Akira laughs and Akira cries, their feet swiveling in their socks and their pyjamas loose around their thin bodies. The ice cream is melting. The wine is warm. Ann spins him once, twice, and he falls into her arms, sobbing. Her hair used to remind him of a doll’s hair—but really it’s soft, perfumed and comforting as he presses his face into it. They dance, arms outstretched to each other and hands held tight, feet moving like they were squashing bugs or grapes between their toes. Ann spins him again, and he feels lighter.

* * *

The sky burns orange and Akira looks out at it.

(I can’t go to work, he thinks. I can’t even get fucking groceries because everything I do reminds me of you. I chipped a fucking mug and I almost yelled out, where’s the adhesive? Where you left it? You’re ruining my life. He thinks: you were my life. Why would you ruin my life? Why would you ruin, my life?)

He starts to make the bed.

* * *

Akira drives to the grocery store in silence. He is a portrait of moving on. And as moving on exists as it currently does, Akira sits in the car for exactly 12 minutes and allows himself to cry before going inside.

* * *

Akira dreams.

We begin with the unspectacular raincoat that lets rain sink into your clothes and the meddlesome gumboots that decide to doom your feet with their ineffective gaps and tight ankle-bites. And we begin with Goro Akechi a few feet away holding a newspaper above his head that is very much on its way to becoming a lump of wet ink in his hands.

“Hey”, he calls. “You’re going to be fine.”

When Akira does wake up, it’s to Goro’s face behind his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> in a bad place atm but working on a longer chaptered piece that hope u will all get to enjoy soon. thank u for reading!
> 
> — tnevmucric.carrd.co


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